


Dear Jim

by LieutenantSaavik



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: M/M, Sad, Spock has emotions, and a family, but with a hopeful ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-05
Updated: 2017-09-06
Packaged: 2018-12-24 08:33:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12008985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LieutenantSaavik/pseuds/LieutenantSaavik
Summary: Jim looks down at the box Spock is holding. “What's in there?” he asks, wondering what could have happened to drive his stoic first officer to what looks like near-tears.“Letters,” says Spock, and his voice is as soft as Jim has ever heard it. “Letters to James Tiberius Kirk.”“Letters?” It takes Jim a moment to realise he means paper correspondence rather than alphabets, which is even stranger than Spock referring to him by name when he’s right there. “From whom?”There is a long pause. “From Ambassador Spock.”OrAfter Kirk's death in the prime timeline, the grieving Spock wrote a series of letters to him. After his death, those letters were discovered by his young counterpart.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I accept all comments and criticism! Please tell me what you think.

There are three knocks on his door, three thuds so evenly spaced Jim knows it can only be Spock’s approach. The knocks are much fainter than is usual, which is odd; Spock, Jim knows well, is the type of person who holds himself to high and identical standards, even for things as simple as knocks on doors.

He crosses to the door, presses the button on the side to open it. “Morning, Spock,” he greets him, hoping his tiredness does not show. He knows he’s been awake since 4:30, insomnia in his head again.

Spock stands there in the hallway, a wooden box in his hand. He somehow seems smaller, though perhaps it’s the early morning and how tired his face looks. “I see I did not wake you,” he says in an approximation of his typical Vulcan coolness. “I know it was not ideal to come to you this early.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Jim leans in, taking a closer look at his first officer. “You haven’t slept at all last night,” he guesses. “You have green circles under your eyes -- I didn’t even know-” he cuts himself off, fixes his voice to sound more captainly. “Mr. Spock, I will be forced to relieve you from bridge duty if you are not taking care of yourself.”

Spock’s eyes look oddly glassy. He hesitates before responding. “I am aware that I am not behaving -- to adopt a human phraseology -- true to form. However, this morning appears to be an exception from any typical routine.”

Jim looks down at the box he’s holding. “Does it have to do with that?” he asks, wondering what could have happened to drive his stoic first officer to what looks like near-tears. “What’s in there?”

“Letters,” says Spock, and his voice is as soft as Jim has ever heard it. “Letters to James Tiberius Kirk.”

“Letters?” It takes Jim a moment to realise he means paper correspondence rather than alphabets, which is even stranger than Spock referring to him by name when he’s right there. “From whom?”

There is a long pause. “From Ambassador Spock.”

“To me?”

“No. He wrote to your counterpart after…”

“After he died,” Jim finishes. His center of gravity shifts, his tiredness intersecting with knowledge that should be no shock. “Well, Vulcans outlive humans anyway,” he says, an attempt at lightheartedness.

“I wondered if showing them to you would be a mistake,” Spock admits, his voice still unusually vulnerable. “And yet… the letters are addressed to Jim Kirk, and since you are him, I think it fitting for you to read them.” He meets Jim’s eyes. “If you wish to.”

Spock offers the box out, and it might be a trick of the light, but it looks as if his dark eyelashes are wet. Jim takes it slowly, accepts its weight into his hands.

He looks down at it. “Was this his box?”

“No. I keep that in my quarters. I have removed the letters from it; it took me some time to find them, as it seemed Ambassador Spock had hidden them within it. This box you may keep.”

“Did you read them?”

“I read one and made the informed decision to leave the rest be.”

“And you think I should read them?”

“I thought it best to leave the decision up to you.”

Jim finds himself at a loss for words. “Thank you. Do -- do you want them back, when I’m done? I mean -- do you-”

“I will leave that up to you. For now, I think, I will return to my quarters, if you find that acceptable.”

“Of course.” Jim waves his hand vaguely. “Get some more sleep.”

“Thank you, Captain.” Spock gives a formal nod, turns, and starts to walk away.

Jim watches him go, the box heavier than it should be in his hands. He turns to look down at it, at its simple plainness, wonders what words it contains. After a moment, he turns and re-enters his quarters, the doors sealing themselves shut behind him.

He crosses to his chair and sits, pulls up the top of the box, and takes in the sight of a stack of thin envelopes tied together with a frayed gold ribbon, a letter opener atop them.

Slowly, he unties the ribbon and takes the first envelope off the top of the stack. It is white, a different rectangle than a standard Earth envelope. “To James Kirk,” it reads, in precise, handwritten script.

He turns it over, sees that the flap has been almost perfectly resealed shut. He places the box with the rest of the letters on the floor, holds the first letter in his hands for some time, just staring at it.

Finally, he takes the letter opener and slits open the back of the envelope, pulling out a single sheet of thin white paper halfway covered with the same handwriting. He considers placing it back, closing the box, but his curiosity is overwhelming.

Turning it over, he starts to read.  
  
  
_Dear Jim,_

_It your memory that is once again driving me both toward and away from Vulcan, both toward and away from everything that reminds me of you._

_My father once told me that change is the essential process of all existence. Death is likewise. I know it is inevitable, the last unknown, and, if you will admit me a small plagiarism, a final frontier of its own. I know not where you have gone, and I know that, as a Vulcan, I will not join you for many years._

_I miss you._

_I cannot find it in myself to feel anything but loss._

_You must remember Edith Keeler. She told me my place was by your side. I wonder where my place is now. I know it is my duty to begin myself anew. I do not feel young, Jim. I feel very, very old._

_It’s futile to wonder what might have been. Yet I saw many years of us together with death far away._

_I felt you die. I never knew how much you grew into me, how close we were, until suddenly you were gone._

_I do not know if you still exist. I know humans have believed in many different afterlives and cycles of reincarnation. I also know they do not have_ _katra in the manner that Vulcans do. I find it impossible to believe you are, in any way, still somewhere, but I find it equally impossible to believe your soul is really gone._

_Humans have written many poems and essays, even entire books, on death. Many have expressed the sentiment that the dead are not really gone if they are remembered by those they honored in life. Perhaps my duty now is to preserve you, to be what we both were. I find that task impossible._

_I will do what you did, then: I will find hope. For you, and because of you, I will hope for both of us._

_Goodbye, Jim. There will never be a day where I will not think of your name._

Jim blinks and looks away, his skin prickling, knowing that he has intruded where he should not, should never have gone. He reaches for the next letter and opens it, somehow unable to stop his fingers as they take the letter opener, as they pull out the next letter and lift it to his eyes.

_Dear Jim,_

_The pervasive sense of loss has not yet dulled. There is a phenomena among humans; that of ‘the phantom limb.’ It seems that you are the second half of me I expect to perceive and never do._

_I will not permit myself to write to you often, and I will not permit myself to irrationally await some sort of response. I tell myself that you are gone, and I try to listen._

_It would be a lie to say that my Vulcan and Human sides are at war. Both are in accord; both are grieving._

_Grief is an odd sensation, Jim. I would once have sacrificed all emotion in an effort never to feel anything even remotely like this ever again. Now I know that it is necessary._

_I have called some of my family to me, though I know I must mourn in a human custom. My mother, Saavik, and Michael are with me; I have cried, and they have seen me. My mother is aged and needs my support; I have found some distraction in helping her._

_My thoughts return to you. If there is any pattern that can describe the life I have led thus far, it is likely those five words._

The letter ends here. Unable to conceive of a story ending that sadly, Jim pulls out the third letter.  
  
  
_Dear Jim,_

 _Today is your birthday. You would have been 61._  
  
  
He closes the letter immediately, placing it back into the box. He rests his head in his hands, curls over himself slightly. He can almost hear Ambassador Spock’s voice in his head, almost see the emotion that went into crafting the words. He places his fingers over his eyes; when he sits up, his fingertips are wet.

He wipes them down his pants, flips to the very last letter in the stack.  
  
  
_Dear Jim,_

_I can feel myself aging. I have little else to say to you, it seems. These letters are a very poor substitute for all the experiences we might have shared._

_I only wish to tell you one more thing._

_You taught me that there was more to life than logic, that the world was far better and brighter than I could have perceived alone. You taught me how to laugh freely; you taught me, in a word, love._

_Though I am so far from you now, I still try to bring your ideas and your hope into New Vulcan. It is unconventional and not so well-received, but I know how little you would care for the words of restrictive tradition. The young counterpart of Saavik is here. Every day, she grows; I am using what I learned from you to teach her, and perhaps one day she will boldly go, much like you did, and spread what I taught her, so that you will never really be gone. I am so grateful that she is alive, so grateful that she is Vulcan’s future._

_I am grateful. Gratitude is something else incredibly human, something else that was necessary, critical to life in a way I should have known._

_I am grateful for what we had. And more, I am grateful that in some universe, even one incredibly different from the one we knew, we are both together, both alive. Perhaps there is a universe out there, more similar to ours, where we are both old and happy. Perhaps there is not._

_It has been ninety-nine years now; more years by half again than you ever had. In that almost-century, I have been more people than I can count. The one that made me happiest was being your first officer, your bondmate, your lover, and your friend. Regardless of where you are now, if you are anywhere at all, I hope you know that you have been and always shall be a part of me, an echo in my thoughts, a home._

_This is the last time I will permit myself to write to you.  I hope I have spread your legacy; I hope I have left a positive one of my own. It is you I come back to. It has always been you, Jim. I know that I will join you soon, slip into whatever comes after this existence._

_Goodbye, my t’hy’la, and, I hope -- hello._


	2. Chapter 2

There is a knock on Spock’s door, an uneven rapping. Spock rouses himself from his third failed attempt at meditation, forces himself to his feet. There is only one person it is circumstantially likely to be. 

“Captain,” he greets Jim, opening his door and taking in the sight of disheveled hair and reddened eyes. “You do not look well.”

“I’m not,” Jim says immediately, his voice uneven. “It’s weird, you know, to read letters to your dead alternate self.”

Spock’s compassion rises, but he finds he doesn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry,” he tries. He resists the illogical urge to move closer, to touch Jim and somehow, through that contact, reassure him that his fate is his own.

Jim smiles wanly. “Don’t be. I -- do you think I should have read them?”

“I do not know. I am not sure words such as ‘should’ even apply to this situation.”

“It is pretty unconventional.”

“Indeed. I do not believe any precedent exists.” Spock regards him. “Captain, perhaps it would be wise to return to your quarters and rest.”

“No,” says Jim. “I haven’t slept all night, so it makes no difference. After some coffee, I’ll be just fine.”

“Caffeine is no substitute for the psychological and physiological benefits of-”

Jim waves his words away. “Spock, I get your concern. But I have everything under control.”

Reluctantly, Spock acquiesces. “If you are certain. You, after all, know yourself best.”

“Thanks.” Jim shifts in the doorway. After a moment, he huffs out a small exhalation. “I left the letters in my cabin.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “I came to return them to you, and I left them.”

“You may keep them if you so wish.”

“No,” he says, with surprising firmness. “Ambassador Spock would have wanted you to have them.”

“I am not sure he ever intended for them to be read.”

Jim sighs, his whole kinetic form seeming to collapse slightly. “Now I feel like an asshole.”

“Do not,” Spock tells him, his voice even. “Curiosity -- it is natural. And I felt the same.”

“We may just make a human out of you yet.” Jim gives him a cryptic smile.

“If I may borrow one of your human virtues,” Spock replies, “I would  hope not.”

Jim’s smile becomes more genuine before fading again. His eyes, still, appear sad.

Spock realises a question has been building. “What did the letters say?” he finds himself asking. He looks behind Jim; the hallway lights are brightening, and he knows that crewmembers will be moving about soon. “If you wish, come in,” he says, standing aside. 

“Thanks.” Jim slips past him and Spock allows the doors to close. He turns, looking even more fatigued. “What do you want to know?”

“If retelling anything will damage your mental state-”

“No, Spock, it’s fine. It’s just that they were… really loving. More than I had imagined. I only really read three of them, but I hadn’t read -- or heard -- anything like that. Ever. Maybe if I had both parents growing up, or if I had spent more time around you and Uhura when you were --” He stops his voice, shakes his head. “Ambassador Spock loved his Captain Kirk,” he says flatly, meeting Spock’s eyes head-on. “In every way you can love someone, I think.”

Spock’s breath catches. He processes the information for a moment, mind scintillating between all the types of love he knows, all of the ones he has experienced -- his past futile flares of sudden affection that he quickly repressed in favor of forbearance, the tight friendship he shares with Lieutenant Uhura, his admiration for Jim coupled with a slowly growing sense of devotion that travels far beyond his work. He flickers to the love he has for his crew, for his family, and he realises in that moment that they are one in the same. For an instant, the words ‘I love you,’ directed nowhere, lodge in his throat, and his mouth opens partway before he forces the sentence down again.

He finds he cannot meet his captain’s eyes, instead notices a smudge on the floor of his cabin that Jim must have left walking in. “Interesting,” he manages finally, satisfied that his voice remains steady. “I know, however, that my paths have not, thus far, followed his.”

“Of course not,” says Jim. “I don’t believe in all that destiny crap anyway.”

Spock tries hard to read his voice, but it is cloaked, and carefully-so -- in a way, he realises, that is not unlike what he himself has been doing. Jim’s emotion, whatever he is feeling, is not showing through. “Neither do I.”

“I just -- I didn’t expect it,” Jim confesses haltingly. “When I met Ambassador Spock -- he wasn’t anything like you. You could tell that he belonged in another place… I didn’t know where, or how, but when I saw him, I got this sense of -- of otherness. Nothing like being with you. I never -- god,” he breaks off, his voice changing, “Seeing me must have broken his heart. I can’t imagine what that would have been like.”

Spock watches his every move, softening further. “It would be futile to try. Everything about our experiences have been, in your own manner of speaking, ‘unconventional.’”

“I know. Do you think his Jim -- do you think he loved him back?”

“I do not know.”

“He did,” says Jim, with such certainty that should not,  _ cannot _ be warranted -- unless --

Spock moves closer to Jim, unobtrusively reaches out and touches him lightly on the outside of his arm.

“Oh, I’m alright, Spock,” says Jim with a faint smile, looking across at him. “I’m just thinking.”

Spock does not remove his hand. Jim looks down at it, pale and deft across the gold of his shirt, his expression changing. Hesitantly, he takes a step forward, shortening the distance between them and tensing it, charging it, until it seems almost dangerous in his stillness.

“There was a word…” he starts, then trails off into quiet. “What does it mean?” His voice drops lower. “There was a word I read in the letter. T, apostrophe h-y, apostrophe l-a. Is it Vulcan, Spock? How do you say it?” 

Spock does not answer. Instead he shifts, bringing his face within inches of Jim’s, and moves his hand down to where Jim’s hand rests against his side. For a moment, he pulls back. Then he closes the gap between them, lightly and then more firmly brushing his fingers over Jim’s.

Jim inhales sharply, his body taut, his lips parting. Any movement from either would send the two of them crashing together, and yet they stand, pooled in each other’s shadows on the floor, completely still.

Spock knows Jim will not initiate. Perhaps because he is the captain, perhaps because of who he is. He watches him stand still, the only time he has seen Jim completely, perfectly still, defenseless in his stillness. His face is tilted back, awash in artificial light and a gentle, intangible yearning.

Achingly softly, as slowly and delicately as he can, Spock leans up to him and tenderly brushes their lips together.

For a moment, they are still again.

Then Jim moves, melting towards Spock, his lips careful and craving and controlled, loving.

Their kiss is brief. They pull back at the same time. 

For another beat of silence, they look at each other, blue eyes on brown ones, light on dark.

Spock feels a small smile creeping over his face. “That is how you say it, Jim.”

Jim smiles back, grins widely, then becomes more solemn. Suddenly, he looks past Spock, his eyes unfocusing. “Do you think they are anywhere out there?” he asks.

Spock turns to see what he is staring at but only sees his austere cabin. “You are speaking of our alternate selves again.”

“Yes. It’s a human thing, I’m sure. Ghosts, whatever; I know it’s stupi-”

Spock clasps Jim’s hand, silencing him. For a moment, he is human and Vulcan; for a moment, all of him is in perfect accord. He chooses his words carefully before he speaks. 

“If there is any true logic to the universe, they are. And they, like us, are happy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please tell me what you think, my loves.


End file.
